The need for increased system bandwidth for broadband data transmission rates in telecommunications and data communications backplane systems has led to several general technical solutions. A first solution has been to increase the density of moderate speed parallel bus structures. Another solution has focused on relatively less dense, high data rate differential pair channels. These solutions have yielded still another solution—the all cable backplanes that are currently used in some data communications applications. Each of these solutions, however, suffers from bandwidth limitations imposed by conductor and printed circuit board (PCB) or cable dielectric losses.
The Shannon-Hartley Theorem provides that, for any given broadband data transmission system protocol, there is usually a linear relationship between the desired system data rate (in Gigabits/sec) and the required system 3 dB bandwidth (in Gigahertz). For example, using fiber channel protocol, the available data rate is approximately four times the 3 dB system bandwidth. It should be understood that bandwidth considerations related to attenuation are usually referenced to the so-called “3 dB bandwidth.”
Traditional broadband data transmission with bandwidth requirements on the order of Gigahertz generally use a data modulated microwave carrier in a “pipe” waveguide as the physical data channel because such waveguides have lower attenuation than comparable cables or PCB's. This type of data channel can be thought of as a “broadband microwave modem” data transmission system in comparison to the broadband digital data transmission commonly used on PCB backplane systems. The present invention extends conventional, air-filled, rectangular waveguides to a backplane system. These waveguides are described in detail below.
Another type of microwave waveguide structure that can be used as a backplane data channel is the non-radiative dielectric (NRD) waveguide operating in the transverse electric 1,0 (TE 1,0) mode. The TE 1,0 NRD waveguide structure can be incorporated into a PCB type backplane bus system. This embodiment is also described in detail in below. Such broadband microwave modem waveguide backplane systems have superior bandwidth and bandwidth-density characteristics relative to the lowest loss conventional PCB or cable backplane systems.
An additional advantage of the microwave modem data transmission system is that the data rate per modulated symbol rate can be multiplied many fold by data compression techniques and enhanced modulation techniques such as K-bit quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), where K=16, 32, 64, etc. It should be understood that, with modems (such as telephone modems, for example), the data rate can be increased almost a hundred-fold over the physical bandwidth limits of so-called “twisted pair” telephone lines.
Waveguides have the best transmission characteristics among many transmission lines, because they have no electromagnetic radiation and relatively low attenuation. Waveguides, however, are impractical for circuit boards and packages for two major reasons. First, the size is typically too large for a transmission line to be embedded in circuit boards. Second, waveguides must be surrounded by metal walls. Vertical metal walls cannot be manufactured easily by lamination techniques, a standard fabrication technique for circuit boards or packages. Thus, there is a need in the art for a broadband microwave modem waveguide backplane systems for laminated printed circuit boards.